well i'm tell our going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture first who is new york now it's boston another brutal police crackdown against the ninety nine percent movement in the middle of the night these more than one hundred people arrested in beantown i'll talk with someone who was there and about what this means for the momentum of the occupations springtime across the nation and republicans play the role of obstructionists again today this time they're obstructing jobs so isn't it crystal clear by now the republicans are only looking out for the richest one percent of america.

you need to know this there was another violent police crackdown against the ninety nine percent movement this time it wasn't in new york city but instead in boston as the occupy boston movement now in its second week beyond its original campsite dewey square demonstrators moved into a new space a block away yesterday prompting police to surround the demonstrators and shut down the occupation in the middle of the night on the first line of people to be arrested where those with a group veterans for peace war veterans who had their american flags yanked from their hands and thrown on the ground before being tackled themselves and arrested. was. god. god. god. god god.

then police moved on to the rest of the demonstrators who were seated peacefully arresting down and dismantling and trashing their campsite into nearby garbage trucks upwards of one hundred people were arrested last night in the one of the largest mass arrests the history of boston but as we've seen following crackdowns in new york city the sort of police action has only strengthened the movement so we see the same sort of auto in the occupy boston and elsewhere around the nation joining me now is john niles a member of the veterans for peace in boston was one of those people who confronted the boston police bus night john welcome. i mean we're ready we're big fans of yours thanks for joining us john so what happened last night. well in a nutshell we would have a regular meeting of the spent lead be butler pick a favorite general especially debugger u.s.m.c.

. war as a racket. when we got more from a lady rack that was also ip by boston the police were about to come down on the occupation we have immediately turned our meeting and jumped on the p.p.a. and headed down to do the square we arrived there probably around eight pm and mingled with the crowd now to make it clear. the original do we square was built to hold up well so they go to the next lot on the. rose kennedy expressway that we have here in boston and that apparently was not part of the deal that they had with the mayor. we stayed around as the reception from the people at the occupy boston for us veterans for peace was spent past a. we were talking to some of the local police that had the regular police uniforms

on and everything seemed to be in good shape but we stuck around. run twenty in the morning. at one end of the. supposedly not condone areas. the big guys dressed in the. on land anxiety uniforms looking like storm troopers. one of them came up and said you have ten minutes to bake day we help pass and then they charge. i was next to the coordinator one of the arrestees pat scanlon and rachel o'neil who was also a an iraq veteran. they were. probably chanting some of the loudest slogans we were reciting. told to defend the constitution of the united states of america against all enemies we have

a problem and it's called the pants to fruition and they were singled out immediately the young lady was absolutely manhandled by a couple of these pitstop all want to be. my friend sort of reached out to help her and they grabbed him and that left me and i was grabbed by two of them one grabbed my shirt i'm wearing substitute your tonight and by the arm and i pulled away and at that point i got some kind of a blow from but on my chin and at the same time i was looking to my right to my left i got i guess it was an elbow to the job broke up a feeling that i wound up on the ground i was fortunate in that the wave of police passed over me and i was able to crawl to safety and nursed by wounds for a bit i got home about four o'clock this morning and good night on when i turned on

one of the local channels and sorry picture of myself getting knocked down and i guess that's my fifteen minutes of fame john we have about a minute not a minute left here what happened to your friends and police cust who were taken into police custody. they were missing the most of the day but what i saw on the five o'clock news that i was by a best friend of predator and outside the courthouse being interviewed and basically they had no criminal record it's a misdemeanor and a fifty dollars fine which i don't think justified some other tactics used by them so i'm pro players and what's planned next pro quickly. well. we've got to continue the fight we as well as the police by the way a part of the ninety nine percent and we this bently butler brigade of veterans for peace are planning on being down with the brothers and sisters tomorrow and we.

will bid we're going to bring up supply of good italian pizzas from the north end of boston which is billy those where it's i that's great john thanks so much for being with us and thanks for having us and keep up the good work my friend you too you too please send our regards to everybody there more than nine hundred cities across the nation of hosted some sort of meet up in support of the ninety nine percent movement until there's some real change we can believe in it's not going away. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question will violent police crackdowns against the ninety nine percent movement to ter boston protesters your choices are no only seek to strengthen the movement nine hundred cities or yes getting tackled arrested will send young people eventually

going to target dot com let us know what you think the polls will be open until tomorrow morning. crazy a large job on her slim just when you thought his fifteen minutes of fame are up joe the plumber filed yesterday papers yesterday in ohio to run for congress in the state's ninth district joe the plumber whose only political qualification for office seems to be that he had a fifteen second conversation with president obama on camera three years ago will face off against either congressman dennis kucinich or congresswoman marcy kaptur for the seat both were redistricted into the same district as a result of the two thousand and ten census that is of course and if joe can even make it out of the republican primary if joe loses he can always fall back on his day job no not as a plumber but as the guy has been used by the republican party for three years. coming up they could create three million new jobs in america so why do republicans

just filibuster the president's jobs bill. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right in the. i think. even one well. we never got to that says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture.

the senate did something today that the republican controlled house of representatives promised never to do they would vote on the american jobs act in an effort to get some wavering democrats on board with legislation senate majority leader harry reid made some tweaks to president obama's original proposal stripping out a provision that would cut off taxpayer subsidies to trans national oil corporations stuff that makes democrats like mary landrieu and joe mansion uncomfortable and replacing it with a five point six percent surtax on people who make more than a million bucks. the washington post this morning describe the politics behind a vote today writing with a revision senate leaders think a bill presents a sharper choice supports spending on education transportation and veterans or

protect the interests of the very wealthy well believe it or not republicans sided with the very very wealthy in a hotel just a few hours ago republicans in the senate filibuster the legislation even though reid led a majority of senators to vote in favor of the president's american jobs act today he fell short of the sixty votes needed to overcome the filibuster so republicans essentially told the three million people who could be put back to work thanks to this legislation flock so didn't republicans just prove that they only care about the top one percent of americans joining me now to offer his take is david so conservative commentator and business pro-business advocate david welcome great to see you back again with us from our new york studio joins thank you tom it's always a pleasure to be on your program thank you so why do you have i always thought these questions over the white why do you hate it's we both you know it's kind of a joke but it is seriously why do you hate the ninety nine percent of us who make

less than the millionaires and billionaires oh well i don't hate that ninety nine percent tom and you know that it was just that this proposal this plan it stunk on the ice it was rife with problems and wasteful spending it was impossible if we're going to be serious about getting our arms around spending if we're going to be serious about job creation and if we're going to be serious about getting back on the right path we couldn't pass it and it did not pass it was a big stinker flop and i really have to look at the president he did a very poor job selling it stephen agence it is an ad hominum is what what specifically did you object to this. well let's take one issue for instance harry reid's boneheaded proposal about taxing millionaires we've tried that before what happens is quite literally overnight america loses all its

millionaires through various deferred income tax avoidance schemes which are perfectly legal now the costs associated with this little change that seem so appealing to this so-called ninety nine percent is astronomical but a little right three hundred million dollars just for a start we said we tried this before we tried this you know herbert hoover raised the top tax rate to ninety one percent it's stayed there from from twenty nine i think it was or thirty or thirty one it stayed there from then until nineteen set what was in one nine hundred sixty four and when it was dropped on seventy four percent and it stayed there until one thousand nine hundred six when when twenty eight percent so we had a little prosperity while the top one percent and i'd like to expose the fallacy of that argument that avoids the actual issue the issue here is that we tax many much

less millionaires because so many people again entered into these various schemes that machinations to avoid receiving that money in their hands it's almost analogous to the argument about minimum wage we say let's raise minimum wage and we neglect the fact that the legal aliens largely are willing to work for less than minimum wage people don't show you become a little illegal aliens to avoid taxes yet your point is well taken that there are loopholes in the tax i do and your point is well taken oh wait a minute what i was saying are pay ok well i would say it and i'm guessing you would agree loopholes in our in foresman particularly now the administration that purportedly wants to do so much for the ninety nine percent is. asli kicking that man what he's really good percent ninety five in the person a quarter a quarter of all the people in america who earn more than a million dollars a year paid lower taxes last year than the than the median income in the united

states around fifty thousand dollars yearly pay lower taxes than the average working person a quarter of that argument is jive and you know that argument for this is what ira statistics david. what they're doing is taking a weighted average they're neglecting to consider those long term capital gains those although obviously the long term rival or that's that's why you have you know the you know warren buffet's may pain the pain seventeen percent you have a romney paid in taxes last year his that wait a minute mitt romney don't care to do. without working a day one day in fact he claimed on the campaign trail that he was unemployed he doesn't have a job what he does have his investments and he made forty million dollars and he paid fourteen percent taxes on it tell me why somebody making forty million dollars with by using money to make money should only pay fourteen percent when if you or i use our brains to make money or something or use our bodies to make money we have

to pay up to thirty six percent why should mitt romney gets a good deal. he doesn't get a special deal and you know if it were a hundred percent actually it's a special deal where did the money come from. he earned it by investments and did he not pay income tax money earned that money he paid for to the contrary did you not weren't they paying a state tax and inheritance taxes david you paid income tax on the so you're wearing did you paid some sex did you pay an income tax on the income that you earned that you used to buy the suit that you're wearing yes i did and if you showed up for work naked do you think that you would no longer be working there. well you make a very interesting point is that you know the tools that we use whether it's our clothes or whether it's our tools if we're buying those yeah we buy them with after tax money and mitt romney the tool that he used to make forty million dollars was

after tax i mean it doesn't matter by the suits if i buy this suit i have to pay sales tax and so does this mitt romney that you're seem so interested in that the moment he pays a lot more taxes than the average working guy and you know it's a pace fourteen percent the average working guy pays are more than that and i imagine when he goes to his heavenly reward he'll also pay a great deal of estate tax no he'll be. if he if you want to argue that there are still some sacraments that it would at least on a you're talking about his kids not him he would be dead but the personal effects i think is a completely different thing if you don't hit the ninety nine percent why do you hate republicans according to a recent poll this is the washington post in bloomberg the majority of americans about two thirds want to see taxes raised on the top one percent and fifty three percent of republicans want to see taxes raised on the top one percent we're talking about a six percent increase in taxes if you take them into the low forty's or for most

of the twentieth century their taxes were in the ninety's between the ninety and seven and it was way too high and it's true i must parity for america let's get some accountability let's stop trying to break the camel's back with this onerous taxation you know if you look at which people are not channels and we're not where your head is near zero they're making out like they're make or break and i bet if they're flying around in private jets they're going to dollar you know paul ryan have these these hedge fund billionaires come into town and buy a three hundred dollars for the wine for dinner you tell me that their back were about to be broken. sure tom i mean even if you were to steal all of their money and throw it into the public coffers the administration nobody suggested anything that i'm saying they should be the same tax rate as their janitors. come on they pay significantly more they're out hasan fourteen percent is chairs it was a thirty six percent and i suspect the longer this drama's be eventually even the

most drug addled member of the audience their eyes are going to open and say wow these numbers don't work no it doesn't i mean as long as the very rich are paying fourteen percent the average that was paid by you know the average income of the of the top ten hedge fund managers and wall street was two billion dollars last year the average income tax made by them was seventeen percent how is that right when their janitors and their secretaries are paying a lot of money in taxes aren't paying those has families heaters and they are paying no less secretaries are paid and there is a dime senator who isn't even a taxpayer at the end of the year that janitor so you're saying the more of your system a cynical the lower the percent of you can see back more than he ever pays then and gets credits that that hedge fund manager is and they've been entitled so and that janitor he's not exposed to alternative minimum tax or any of the other issues so come on it's just not true ok david thank you very much i think we've got an

impasse here where we just have to agree to disagree david thanks for being with tom before you let me go over i just want to say i heard the previous guest and i also a veteran i just want to let your listening audience know and viewing audience i stand with those brave men and woman in boston their law enforcement there some of the finest police officers in the world ok you're on the record thank you dana. the u.s. justice department announced today that it for a potential assassination plot right here in washington d.c. against the saudi ambassador to the united states and even more troubling according to the department of justice elements of the iranian government they have been involved two suspects have been named in the plot one a naturalized u.s. citizen and a plot involved in the saudi arabian embassy as well as the israeli embassy in the nation's capital cover was apparently blown off the assassination attempt and one of those two suspects approached informant with the u.s. drug enforcement agency down in mexico are free one point five million for the

death of the saudi ambassador it was f.b.i. director robert mueller talking today on this issue. these individuals had no regard for their intended victim no regard for innocent citizens who might have been hurt or killed in this attempted assassination they had no regard for the rule of law and with these charges we bring the full weight of fat law to bear on those responsible and we send a clear message that any attempts on american soil will not be tolerated and this was ramifications of this for the tag could be enormous here's what attorney general eric holder said about iran's connections to the attack. when the plane alleges that this conspiracy was conceived was sponsored and was directed from iran and constitutes a flagrant violation of u.s. and international law including a convention that explicitly protects diplomats from being

a whore and in addition to holding these individual conspirators accountable for their alleged role in this plot the united states is committed to holding iran accountable for its actions or body sore and already some republican congressmen are saying this is an act of war so what will this mean for an already tense relationship with iran and is there more to it than meets the eye joining me now as you like clifton national security reporter with think progress dot org eli welcome thank you for having me thanks for joining us u.s. officials say the plan to kill the ambassador was directed by tehran and that the suspect in custody has confessed that he was recruited and funded by men he understood to be senior officers of the qods force an elite force in or around revolutionary guard how likely is it that the iranian government was actually directly involved in a public. well i mean the and the allegations of the charges that have been brought seem very very serious and if true this will certainly have

a huge impact on u.s. iran relations not not to mention for that matter saudi iran relations which which are not good as they currently stand as to whether it's possible that that they were working for the iranian government as as it seems as like one of the suspects does claim it remains something that i think we'll have to see the evidence on to establish whether or not that's that's believable. it if so as i said i think this is this is really going to be a devastating thing you know senator mark kirk has already indicated that that the response should be pretty harsh from the united states that we should just look to basically bring down the iranian central bank bank markazi. so i think those are the types of responses we should be looking for in the in the days and weeks and weeks ahead as the details of this case come out so we know if this well if this was anything more than a guy in mexico talking to

a dea agent. i think that's the question that sort of all of us are wondering if it's sort of boggles the imagination this idea that that that somebody working for the for the i r g c made contact with the mexican drug cartels to solicit a murder for hire of the saudi ambassador in washington. if if if this is the case it really is quite a fascinating and really is as i say devastating. set of allegations and the case against these two individuals will definitely have a resounding impact both in washington but put a little also in tehran and riyadh iran and saudi arabia are bold bitter political enemies in a long running middle eastern conflict that's been fueled by sectarian hostilities the sunni versus shia. what would a raw and game. by targeting a saudi official in the united states i think that's that's a very good question and those of us looking at the news today just taking it all

at face value assuming that that these allegations are accurate and that these individuals were working with the iranian government if you work with that thought process it's very hard to understand what went on and what the iranians thought they were going to gain from this remember the u.s. saudi relations have not been great over the course of the arab spring the way we've often found ourselves on opposite sides of a number of the uprisings in the region with the u.s. often either implicitly or explicitly supporting some of the democratic movements and the saudis often working against them so it really boggles the imagination why the iranians would want to blow up the saudi ambassador in washington d.c. now the saudis and the iranians certainly have their own problems of but it would seem as if you know it's leaking from sort of the state of rational self interest for the iranians that they would probably want to stand back and let the tensions

in the u.s. saudi relationship play themselves out at least for the for the time being logic would indicate the u.s. says it's committed to holding iran accountable for its actions other than arrested in charging these two men what are their options the u.s. have at its disposal for holding the iranian government accountable on the on you know assuming that there is actually enough evidence to to can hold somebody. well i think it's very likely will see a push for new sanctions certainly if it's established that these individuals were working on behalf of the iranian government i think it's it's really it's likely will see very targeted sanctions focused as i said earlier on on bank markazi the central bank i know the comments have been made about sort of comparing it to the types of sanctions you might have seen on north korea even really designed to sort of undercut the currency so i think those are the types of things we should be watching for i think thus far though certainly a mark kirk has has has has said that so far the response will at least that he's

pushing for will be limited to further sanctions on the central bank and since the plot was not successful that there would not be an examination or a push for any sort of military response thus far as a republican all right here lawmakers have already gone on record calling this an act of war fox news is absolutely hysterical will this be exploited by the war hawks in congress and in the media as an opportunity to take military action against iran oh absolutely i mean i think that there are certainly individuals who have been pushing for for harsher a u.s. strategy toward toward tehran for the past several years and have openly advocated the past for military action in an earlier cases to to deter or to or to destroy iran's nuclear program so i think i have no doubt my mind that we'll be seeing those same individuals pushing similar arguments in the days and weeks ahead

except in this case that we're referring back now to to the case against these these two individuals the iranian state media and a spokesman person for iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad's office said today that this was just the latest example of american propaganda against iran a script dreamed up by the cia to distract americans from our own internal problems is that any kind of convincing argument for people inside iran and iran's neighbors . yes we have about thirty so i don't think it's a convincing argument i think that it probably will find traction in some some areas. looking back on sort of the u.s. iran relations that as i said before this doesn't make a lot of sense because especially coming up on the heels of the release of the hikers it seemed as if there was a bit of a attempt to at least get on get out get ahead of some sort of a public relations push and win sort of hearts and minds if you will from the iranian end and and this would certainly fly in the face of that you live thanks so much for being with us and thank you for having me. coming up.